You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in Hungarian. (June 2013)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the Hungarian article.
Machine translation, likeDeepL orGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
Youmust providecopyright attribution in theedit summary accompanying your translation by providing aninterlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary isContent in this edit is translated from the existing Hungarian Wikipedia article at [[:hu:Nagy Imre (politikus)]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template{{Translated|hu|Nagy Imre (politikus)}} to thetalk page.
Born to apeasant family, Nagy was apprenticed as alocksmith before being drafted inWorld War I. Nagy was a committed communist from soon after theRussian Revolution, and through the 1920s he engaged in underground party activity in Hungary. Living in the Soviet Union from 1930, he served the SovietNKVD secret police as an informer from 1933 to 1941. Nagy returned to Hungary shortly before the end ofWorld War II, and served in various offices as theHungarian Working People's Party (MDP) took control of Hungary in the late 1940s and the country entered theSoviet sphere of influence. In 1944 and 1945, he was Hungary's Minister of Agriculture, where he carried out land divisions that won him widespread popularity among the peasantry. He served asInterior Minister of Hungary from 1945 to 1946. Nagy became prime minister in 1953 and attempted to relax some of the harshest aspects ofMátyás Rákosi'sStalinist regime, but was subverted and eventually forced out of the government in 1955 by Rákosi's continuing influence as General Secretary of the MDP. Nagy remained popular with writers, intellectuals, and thecommon people, who saw him as an icon of reform against the hard-line elements in the Soviet-backed regime.
The outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution on 23 October 1956 saw Nagy elevated to the position of Prime Minister on 24 October as a central demand of the revolutionaries and common people. Nagy's reformist faction gained full control of the government, admitted non-communist politicians, dissolved theÁVH secret police, promised democratic reforms, and unilaterally withdrew Hungary from theWarsaw Pact on 1 November. The Soviet Union launched a massive military invasion of Hungary on 4 November, forcibly deposing Nagy, who fled to theEmbassy of Yugoslavia inBudapest. Nagy was lured out of the embassy under false promises on 22 November and was arrested and deported toRomania. On 16 June 1958, Nagy was tried and executed for treason alongside his closest allies, and his body was buried in anunmarked grave.
Imre Nagy was born prematurely on 7 June 1896 in the town ofKaposvár in theKingdom of Hungary,Austria-Hungary, to a small-town family ofpeasant origin.[2] His father, József Nagy (1869–1929), was aLutheran and a carriage driver for the lieutenant-general ofSomogy county. His mother, Rozália Szabó (1877–1969), served as a maid for the lieutenant-general's wife.[2] They both had left the countryside in their youth to work in Kaposvár.[2] Nagy and Szabó married in January 1896.[2] In 1902, József became a postal worker and began building a house for the family in 1907 but lost his job in 1911 and had to sell the house.[3] He was an unskilled worker for the rest of his life.[3]
In 1904 Nagy's family moved toPécs before returning to Kaposvár the following year. Nagy attended agymnasium in Kaposvár from 1907 to 1912, performing poorly.[4] The gymnasium cancelled his tuition due to his lack of accomplishment and funding.[4] He apprenticed as alocksmith in a small metalworking firm in Kaposvár, before moving to a factory for agricultural machinery inLosonc in northern Hungary in 1912. He returned to Kaposvár in 1913 and was given a journeyman's certificate as a metal fitter in 1914. He abandoned the job in the summer of 1914 and became a clerk at a lawyer's office, while simultaneously attending a commercial high school in Kaposvár, where his student performance was good.[4]
After the outbreak of theFirst World War in July 1914, Nagy was called up for military service in theAustro-Hungarian Army in December 1914 and found fit for service.[5] He reported for duty at the 17th Royal Hungarian Honvéd Infantry Regiment in May 1915, after the end of the school year and before he had graduated.[5] After three months of basic training inSzékesfehérvár, his unit was sent to theItalian Front in August 1915, where he was wounded in his leg at theThird Battle of the Isonzo. After convalescing in afield hospital, he was trained as a machine gunner in the 19th Machine Gun Battalion, promoted to corporal and sent to theEastern Front in the summer of 1916.[6]
In captivity in Camp Berezovka nearLake Baikal in Siberia he participated in aMarxist discussion group until 1917.[10] In 1918, he joined the Communist (Social Democratic) Party of the Foreign Workers of Siberia, a sub-group of the RussianCommunist Party.[10][8] He fought in the ranks of theRed Army from February to September 1918 during theRussian Civil War.[10] Some sources, including the so-called "Yurovsky Document" allege Nagy and his unit were tasked with guarding the former RussianImperial Family inYekaterinburg.[11] Though some historians have speculated Nagy himself was among the men in the firing squad thatexecuted the Romanovs, Ivan Plotnikov, history professor at theUral State University, stated per his research that the executioners wereYakov Yurovsky,Grigory Nikulin,Mikhail Medvedev (Kudrin),Peter Ermakov,Stepan Vaganov,Alexey Kabanov,Pavel Medvedev, V. N. Netrebin, and Y. M. Tselms. The White Army investigator Nikolai Sokolov claimed that the execution of the Imperial Family was carried out by a group of "Latvians led by a Jew".[12] However, in light of Plotnikov's research, the group that carried out the execution consisted almost entirely ofethnic Russians (Nikulin, Kudrin, Ermakov, Vaganov, Kabanov, Medvedev and Netrebin) with the participation of one Jew (Yurovsky) and possibly, one Latvian (Tselms).[13] Allegations of Nagy's presence at theIpatiev House remains a controversial matter among biographers, and has contributed to his divisive legacy in modern Hungary.
Nagy and his unit were later encircled and he was ultimately taken prisoner by theCzechoslovak Legion in early September 1918.[10] He escaped captivity and spent the period until February 1920 holding odd jobs inWhite-controlled territory near Lake Baikal.[10] The Red Army reachedIrkutsk on 7 February 1920, ending Nagy's participation in the Civil War.[10] On 12 February 1920 he became a candidate member of the Russian Communist Party and a full-time member on 10 May.[14] He served the rest of 1920 as a clerk for the communistCheka secret police on matters related to prisoners of war.[14]
After a month of training by the Cheka in subversive activities, theHungarian Communist Party (KMP) sent Nagy along with 277 other Hungarian communists toHungary in April 1921 to build up an underground conspiratorial network in a country where the Communist Party had been banned since 1919.[15][8] Nagy reached Kaposvár in late May 1921.[15] Upon arrival, he joined theSocial Democratic Party of Hungary (MSZDP).[16] After working temporary jobs in the rest of 1921 and early 1922, he joined the First Hungarian Insurance Company and became an office worker in Kaposvár.[17] He became severely overweight around this time.[18] He helped to build up the socialist movement in his hometown, to his parents' disapproval.[18] He became secretary of the MSZDP's local branch in 1924.[19] He was expelled from the party for advocating revolution and was placed under police surveillance.[19] He married Mária Égető on November 28, 1925.[19]
Nagy with his wife Mária and daughterErzsébet in 1929.
In January 1926, Nagy and István Sinkovics established the Kaposvár office of theSocialist Workers’ Party of Hungary (MSZMP), a semi-communist left-wing splinter group from the MSZDP.[20] Nagy was successful in gaining 700 voters for the MSZMP Kaposvár parliamentary candidate, one of the party's few successes in the countryside west ofBudapest.[21] By this time Nagy had begun to prioritize his interest in agriculture over political leadership and rejected an offer from communist cadres from Vienna to build up the illegal KMP in western Hungary.[22] The MSZMP in Kaposvár was prohibited and Nagy was fired from his insurance job in February 1927 and arrested on 27 February.[22] He was released after two months in prison.[22] While under police surveillance, Nagy found a job as an agent for the Phoenix Insurance Company.[23] He was arrested again in December 1927 for three days and was called toVienna by the KMP, arriving in March 1928.[23] He became head of the KMP's agrarian section and was sent back to Hungary in September 1928 under a false identity to build up underground communist networks.[24] His efforts were largely a failure, his largest successes being the publishing of three issues of a small journal and his avoidance of arrest.[24] His advocacy of legal political activity over the party's preference for largely impotent clandestine work in villages was dismissed as "right-deviancy" by the ultra-left KMP leadership.[25]
In December 1929, he traveled to theSoviet Union, arriving in Moscow in February 1930 to participate in the KMP's second congress.[26] He rejoined the Communist Party, also becoming a Soviet citizen. He was engaged in agricultural research at the International Agrarian Institute for six years, but also worked in the Hungarian section of theComintern.[8] He was expelled from the party on 8 January 1936 and worked for the Soviet Statistical Service from the summer of 1936 onward.[27] Under the codename "Volodia", Nagy served theNKVD secret police as an informer from 1933 to 1941.[28][29][30] The NKVD praised him as a "qualified agent, who shows great initiative and an ability to approach people".[29] The support that Nagy received from the Soviet leadership after theSecond World War was to some extent a result of his loyal service as a foreigner and denouncer to the NKVD.[28]
After the Second World War, Nagy returned toHungary. He was the Minister of Agriculture in the government ofBéla Miklós de Dálnok, delegated by the Hungarian Communist Party. He distributed land among the peasant population. In the next government, led byTildy, he was the Minister of Interior. At this period he played an active role in theexpulsion of the Hungarian Germans.[31]
After two years asChairman of theCouncil of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic (1953–1955), during which he promoted his "New Course" in Socialism, Nagy fell out of favour with the Soviet Politburo. He was deprived of his Hungarian Central Committee, Politburo, and all other Party functions and, on 18 April 1955, he was sacked as Chairman of the Council of Ministers.[33]
FollowingNikita Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" denouncing the crimes of Stalin on 25 February 1956, dissent began to grow in Eastern Bloc against the ruling Stalinist-era party leaders. In Hungary,Mátyás Rákosi—who self-styled as "Stalin's greatest disciple"—came under increasingly intense criticism for his policies from both the Party and general populace, with more and more prominent voices calling for his resignation. This public criticism often took the form of the Petőfi Circle—a debating club established by theDISZ student youth union to discuss Communist policy—which soon became one of the foremost outlets of dissent against the regime. While Nagy himself never attended a Petőfi Circle meeting, he was kept well informed of events by his close associatesMiklós Vásárhelyi andGéza Losonczy, who informed him of the vast popular support expressed for him at the meetings and the widespread desire for his restoration to the leadership.[34]
In the face of widespread public pressure on Rákosi, the Soviets forced the unpopular leader to resign from power on 18 July 1956 and leave for the Soviet Union. However, they replaced him with his equally hard-line second in commandErnő Gerő, a change which did little to mollify public dissent. Nagy was a prominent guest at the 6 October reburial of former secret police chiefLászló Rajk, who had been purged by the Rákosi regime and later rehabilitated. He was readmitted to the Party on 13 October in the midst of growing revolutionary fervor. On 22 October, students from theTechnical University in Budapest compiled a list ofsixteen national policy demands, the third of which was Nagy's restoration to the premiership.
In the afternoon of 23 October, students and workers gathered in Budapest for a massive opposition demonstration arranged by the Technical University students, chanting—among other things—slogans of support for Imre Nagy. While the ex-premier sympathized with their reformist demands, he was hesitant to support the movement, believing it to be too radical in its demands. While he was in favor of changes to the system, he preferred those to be made within the framework of his "New Course" of 1953–55 and not a revolutionary upheaval. He also feared that the demonstration was a provocation by Gerő and Hegedüs to frame him as inciting rebellion and to crack down on the opposition.
His associates ultimately convinced him to travel to the Parliament Building and give a speech to the demonstrators to calm the unrest. While no accurate record of this speech exists, it did not have its intended effect; Nagy essentially told the protesters to go home and let the Party handle things. The demonstrations soon escalated into a full-scale revolt asÁVH secret policemen opened fire on the protesting citizens. Hungarian soldiers sent to crush the demonstrators instead sided with them, and Gerő soon called in Soviet intervention.
Early in the morning of 24 October, Nagy was renamed asChairman of theCouncil of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic again, in an attempt to appease the populace. However, he was initially isolated within the government, and powerless to stop the Soviet invasion of the capital that day. The decision to call in Soviet forces had already been made by Gerő and outgoing Prime MinisterAndrás Hegedüs the previous night, but many suspected that Nagy had signed the order.[35] This perception was not helped by the fact that Nagy declared martial law on that same day and offered an "amnesty" to all rebels who laid down their arms, weakening the public's trust in him. The next day (25 October) he announced he would begin negotiations on the withdrawal of Soviet troops after order was restored. On 26 October, he began to meet with delegations from the Writers' Union and student groups, as well as from the Borsod Workers' Council inMiskolc.
On 27 October, Nagy announced a major reformation of his government, to include several non-communist politicians including former presidentZoltán Tildy as aMinister of State. At negotiations with Soviet representativesAnastas Mikoyan andMikhail Suslov, Nagy and the Hungarian government delegation pushed for a ceasefire and political solution.
In the morning of 28 October, Nagy successfully prevented a massive attack on the main rebel strongholds at theCorvin Cinema and Kilián Barracks by Soviet troops and pro-regime Hungarian units. He negotiated a ceasefire with the Soviets, which came into effect at 12:15 and fighting began to die down across the city and country. Later that day, he gave a speech on the radio assessing the events as a "national democratic movement," proclaiming his full support of the Revolution and agreeing to fulfill some of the public's demands.[36] He announced the dissolution of the ÁVH and his intention to negotiate the full withdrawal of Soviet troops from the city. Nagy also supported the creation of a National Guard, a force of combined soldiers and armed civilians to maintain order amidst the chaos of the Revolution.
On 29 October, as fighting died down across Budapest and Soviet troops began to withdraw, Nagy moved his office from the Party headquarters to the Parliament Building. He also began to meet and negotiated with several representatives of the armed groups that day, as well as the representatives of the workers' councils that had been formed over the course of the previous week.
By 30 October, Nagy's reformist faction had gained full control of the Hungarian government. Ernő Gerő and the other Stalinist hard-liners had left for the Soviet Union, and Nagy's government announced its intent to restore a multi-party system based on the coalition parties from 1945.[37] Throughout this period, Nagy remained steadfastly committed to Marxism; but his conception of Marxism was as "a science that cannot remain static", and he railed against the "rigid dogmatism" of "the Stalinist monopoly".[38] He did not intend a full return to multi-party liberal democracy but a limited one within a socialist framework, and was willing to allow the function of the pre-1948 coalition parties.[39]
Nagy was appointed to the temporary leadership committee of the newly formedHungarian Socialist Workers' Party, which replaced the disintegratedHungarian Working People's Party on 31 October. This was originally intended as a "national communist" party that would preserve the gains of the Revolution. However, at a meeting of theSoviet Politburo that day, the Kremlin leaders decided that the Revolution had gone too far and needed to be crushed. On the night of 31 October – 1 November, Soviet troops began crossing back into Hungary, contrary to their declaration of 30 October expressing willingness to withdraw from the country entirely. Nagy protested this action to Soviet AmbassadorYuri Andropov; the latter replied that the new troops were only there to cover the full withdrawal and protect Soviet citizens living in Hungary. This likely prompted Nagy to make his most controversial decision. In response to a major demand of the revolutionaries, he announced Hungary's withdrawal from theWarsaw Pact and appealed through the UN for the great powers, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, to recognise Hungary's status as a neutral state.[40] Late that night, General SecretaryJános Kádár went to the Soviet embassy, and the next day he was taken to Moscow.
Between 1–3 November, Nikita Khrushchev traveled to variousWarsaw Pact countries as well as to Yugoslavia to inform them of his plans to attack Hungary. On the advice of Yugoslav leaderJosip Broz Tito, he selected the then-Party General Secretary János Kádár as the country's new leader on 2 November, and was willing to let Nagy remain in the government if he cooperated. On 3 November, Nagy formed a new government, this time with a Communist minority. It included members of the Communists,Independent Smallholders' Party,Peasants' Party, andSocial Democrats. However, it would only be in office for less than a day.
In the early morning hours of 4 November, the USSR launched "Operation Whirlwind," a massive military attack on Budapest and on rebel strongholds throughout the country. Nagy made a dramatic announcement to the country and the world about this operation.[41] However, to minimize damage he ordered the Hungarian Army not to resist the invaders.[42] Soon after, he fled to theYugoslav Embassy, where he and many of his followers were given sanctuary.
In spite of a written safe conduct of free passage byJános Kádár, on 22 November, Nagy was arrested by the Soviet forces as he was leaving the Yugoslav Embassy and taken toSnagov,Romania.[43][44]
Subsequently, the Soviets returned Nagy to Hungary, where he was secretly charged with organizing the overthrow of the Hungarian People's Republic and with treason.[45] Nagy was secretly tried, found guilty, sentenced to death and executed by hanging in June 1958.[46] His trial and execution were made public only after the sentence had been carried out.[47] According to Fedor Burlatsky, aKremlin insider,Nikita Khrushchev had Nagy executed, "as a lesson to all other leaders in socialist countries".[48] American journalistJohn Gunther described the events leading to Nagy's death as "an episode of unparalleled infamy".[49]
Nagy was buried, along with his co-defendants, in the prison yard where the executions were carried out and years later was removed to a distant corner (section 301) of theNew Public Cemetery, Budapest,[50] face-down, and with his hands and feet tied withbarbed wire. Next to his grave stands a memorial bell inscribed inLatin, Hungarian, German and English. The Latin reads: "Vivos voco / Mortuos plango / Fulgura frango", which is translated as: "I call the living, I mourn the dead, I break the thunderbolts".[51]
Nagy's reinterment on 16 June 1989. One of the speakers at the funeral was a youngViktor Orbán, who demanded democratic elections and the withdrawal of theSoviet Army from the country.
During the time when the Stalinist leadership of Hungary would not permit Nagy's death to be commemorated, or permit access to his burial place, acenotaph in his honour was erected inPère Lachaise Cemetery in Paris on 16 June 1988.[52]
In 1989, Imre Nagy was rehabilitated and his remains reburied on the 31st anniversary of his execution in the same plot after a funeral organised in part by the democratic opposition to the country's socialist regime.[53] Over 200,000 people are estimated to have attended Nagy's reinterment. The occasion of Nagy's funeral was an important factor in the end of the communist government in Hungary.[54]
On 28 December 2018, a popular statue of Nagy inaugurated in 1996 was removed from central Budapest to a less central location, in order to make way for a reconstructed memorial to the victims of the1919 Red Terror that originally stood in the same place from 1934 to 1945, duringMiklós Horthy'spro-Naziregime. Opposition parties, mainly liberal, socialist and the remaining communists, accusedViktor Orbán's right-wing government ofhistorical revisionism; his supporters, however, argued that the initiative was taken as an attempt to restore the city landscape to its pre-World War II form and to "erase the traces of the communist era".[55][56][57][58]
Nagy's collected writings, most of which he wrote after his dismissal as Chairman of the Council of Ministers in April 1955, were smuggled out of Hungary and published in the West in 1957 under the titleOn Communism: In Defense of the New Course.[59]
Nagy was married to Mária Égető. The couple had one daughter,Erzsébet Nagy (1927–2008), a Hungarian writer and translator.[60] Erzsébet Nagy married Ferenc Jánosi. Imre Nagy did not object to his daughter's romance and eventual marriage to a Protestant minister, attending their religious wedding ceremony in 1946 without Politburo permission. In 1982, Erzsébet Nagy married János Vészi.[30]
^abGati, Charles (2006). Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt, p. 42. Stanford University Press.ISBN0-8047-5606-6.
^Stokes, Gale.From Stalinism to Pluralism. pp. 82–83
^Sándor Révész: Communists in the Revolution, Gábor Gyáni – Rainer M. János (ed.): Thousand Ninety-Seventy in the New Historical Literature, Symbol and Idea History of the Revolution, p. 2007. 1956 Institute, Budapest,ISBN9789639739024
^Gyorgy Litvan,The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, (Longman House: New York, 1996), 55–59
^Ferenc Donáth: Imre Nagy, Radio News of 4 November 1956 and the Geneva Conventions. Our past, 2007/1. s. 150–168.
^Hall, Simon.1956: The World in Revolt. New York: Pegasus Books, 2015. pp. 346–347
^The Counter-revolutionary Conspiracy of Imre Nagy and his Accomplices White Book, published by the Information Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic (No date).
Granville, Johanna (2004).The First Domino: International Decision Making During the Hungarian Crisis of 1956.College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press.ISBN978-1-58544-298-0.
Rainer, János M. (2009) [2002].Imre Nagy: A Biography. Translated by Legters, Lyman H. London: I.B. Tauris.ISBN978-1-84511-959-1.
KGB ChiefVladimir Kryuchkov to CC CPSU, 16 June 1989 (trans. Johanna Granville).Cold War International History Project Bulletin 5 (1995): 36 [from:TsKhSD, F. 89, Per. 45, Dok. 82.]
Alajos Dornbach,The Secret Trial of Imre Nagy, Greenwood Press, 1995.ISBN0-275-94332-1
Peter Unwin,Voice in the Wilderness: Imre Nagy and the Hungarian Revolution, Little, Brown, 1991.ISBN0-356-20316-6
Karl Benziger,Imre Nagy, Martyr of the Nation: Contested History, Legitimacy, and Popular Memory in Hungary. Lexington Books, 2008.ISBN0-7391-2330-0
.jpg)
